Background

Our sister company, Holt Doctors, were appointed as master vendor to United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust (ULH) and two other Trusts in 2016. The relationship has been very successful with the Trust seeing significant benefits in terms of savings on agency rates, high fill rates and the increased efficiencies in utilising the LMS IT portal for agency bookings and Direct Engagement.

The challenge

Whilst the Trust already had the facility to use LMS to run their own Bank of medical locums, this was an area where they had limited resources to focus. Consequently, they had trouble controlling rates, difficulty in coordinating across departments, and low engagement from doctors. In particular:

• The Trust were reliant on the same pool of doctors – with bookings agreed locally within departments
• With rates and shifts agreed within departments they were only visible to finance once worked/paid – causing difficulties for forecasting/accruals
• The Trust’s team had limited capability to monitor and maintain compliance for any bank workers no longer employed (and working “”as and when”)

The solution

Agile Workforce Services now provide ULH with a managed bank solution – implemented with no disruption at all to the Trust’s own medical staffing team, and which provides:

• Dedicated team managing the on-boarding, compliance and booking of bank candidates
• Ongoing retention, recruitment and attraction programme to grow the Bank
• Auto-enrolment of employees joining the Trust on to Bank
• 24/7 support, and training, for candidates and the Trust
• An end to end booking system (using LMS) to ensure a fully integrated approach
• Advanced white labelled APP staff bank technology – increased engagement and flexibility for candidates
• The managed bank for ULHT has been live since 2nd March 2020 and achieved considerable results.

Key aims

ULH needed a solution with market leading technology at its centre, combined with a team of specialists and the continuity of resources to really drive long term sustainable success.

• Increased engagement by their own medical doctors to work via the Bank – with equal access
• Marketing and communications support to grow the Bank
• Fully managed retention, on-boarding, registration, compliance, booking and payment processes
• Increased control and visibility of forward spend on bank – rate authorisation controls
• Assurance on compliance of candidates
• Adherence with Working Time Directive
• Reduced reliance on agencies
• Increased bank fill rates
• Savings

The hands on approach of the Agile team has not just assisted with visibility and controls for the Trust but it has had a really positive impact on the engagement by doctors – with doctors confident in being able to access a range of shifts and in receiving direct support from the Agile team to help with compliance, timesheet, payment and other queries.

Testimonials

The Agile Managed Bank contract has exceeded our expectations. We have seen our bank fill rate increase from 20% to 50% in 6 months and have seen reduction against our agency spend of £2.1m.

We would highly recommend the service to any other Trusts needing support with their bank

Debbie Clegg - Temporary Medical Staffing Manager - United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust

 

For more information call 01756 860023 or email the team on info@agile-workforce.co.uk